Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Knowit audiocast with teleconference Q1 2022. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present Per Wallentin, CEO, and Marie Björklund, CFO. Please begin your meeting.
Hello, my name is Per Wallentin, and as you said, I'm the CEO of the company. With me, I also have Marie Björklund, our CFO, who will take us through the numbers later on. We can take the next slide, please. First of all, I would like to take you through some operational highlights during the first quarter. We had a very good start of the year where we experienced good demand for our services, which in turn have resulted in strong growth and improved margins. I'm pleased that we deliver net sales of almost SEK 1.7 billion, corresponding to an increase of around 13% when we compare Knowit today to Knowit plus acquired companies, a year ago. Adjusted currency effects of the growth was around 10%.
We deliver an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 194.2 million, and that's our strongest quarter ever, at a healthy margin of 11.5%. All in all, we see all four business areas performing very well. We can take the next slide, please. An important milestone in the first quarter was the publication of our new sustainability goals around one month ago. These goals, in combination with the financial goals, will ensure the company steers towards long-term profitable and sustainable growth. The goals are 80% of our net sales shall contribute to at least one of the UN SDGs, where Knowit can make the largest difference. In 2021, this figure was 74%. In 2022, we will be climate positive, and we commit to halve our CO2 emissions before 2030.
Knowit shall be an inclusive workplace with an even gender distribution among executives at all levels. That's the three goals. We can take the next slide, please. We'll now take a look at our business areas more in detail. Solutions, our largest business area, reported net sales of 976 million SEK for the quarter, corresponding to 17.1% growth included in acquired entities. We are pleased to report a healthy EBITDA margin of almost 13%, and we continue to grow with an especially strong development in Norway, and we also see good trends in Finland for the quarter. We can take the next slide, please.
Experience, our digital agency, reported sales of SEK 413 million in the quarter, an increase of almost 14% including acquired entities. We see especially good demand, particularly in Sweden and Denmark. We are happy to see that the integration of our newly acquired digital agencies, Strømlin and 1508, has been very successful, driving high-end strategy consulting and new businesses. As some of you know, we recruited many new colleagues during the second half of 2021, and the process of getting them up to speed in projects have been very successful. We can take the next slide, please.
Coming to our newest business area, Connectivity, reporting 246 million SEK in the quarter, growing with almost 13% in existing business, which I'm very happy with, as that is a new part of Knowit. Connectivity strengthen our offers at R&D-intense industries such as telco, tech, and automotive. Also the share of Polish employees that delivers into the Swedish projects have increased, which have a good positive impact on our margins. Of course, also here we continue to recruit and focus on recruitment activities to support further growth. We can take the next slide, please. Our management consultancy, Knowit Insight, reported sales of around 170 million SEK for the third quarter, corresponding to around 7% growth, including acquired entities.
The consolidation of business offerings in Stockholm have been proven successful with many new business opportunities. We have a solid margin development and the EBITA margin increasing to almost 12%. Of course, in Insight and in other areas, we see that the recruitment activities will remain in focus. We can take the next slide, please. Now I would like to turn over to you, Marie, and you will go through the financials in detail.
Next slide, please. Thank you, Per. Looking at Knowit, the whole group in total, we delivered sales of approximately SEK 1.7 billion compared to SEK 1 billion reported for the same quarter in 2021. The sales increase was of course impacted by our acquisitions, both Capacent and mainly Cybercom. This quarter, we also consolidated Stromlin and 1508. The acquisitions closed in beginning of January this year. More importantly, we can see a very good growth in existing businesses, which is satisfying. We have a positive currency effect, but after taking this away, we can still see a very good growth. Our adjusted EBITA is SEK 194 million in this quarter, and the adjustment we're making is related to acquisition and integration costs and amounts to around SEK 2 million in the first quarter.
The currency effect has a positive impact on the EBITDA of SEK 4.8 million. All in all, our adjusted EBITA margin was 11.5% in line with the last quarter in 2021, and way higher than the first quarter of 2021 when it was 10.2%. Next slide, please. This slide shows our adjusted EBITA development in which you can see how much the result has grown over the years. We are ending this quarter with a rolling 12-month adjusted EBITA of SEK 579 million. We're especially happy with this development since we had an intense period with integration work this time. Next slide, please.
Our net debt at the end of the quarter amounted to SEK 184 million, an increase compared to previous quarter, following mainly due to acquisitions this past year. This corresponds to a net debt/EBITDA ratio of around 0.3, which is well within our financial targets, which is set to two. We continue to enjoy a solid financial position, which leaves room for us to take good care of the opportunities that lie ahead of us. With that, I leave it to you, Per, to say some final words. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Marie. Well, to summarize, we are delighted, of course, to present another solid quarter with high activities in all areas. We see a very high demand for our services across the Nordic region, and Poland. However, we are challenged by a hot employee market, meaning that even though our recruitment activities are successful, we also lose some employees. That is mainly due to post-COVID activities in the market. I think that will remain during 2022. I think that we are handling it well. The integration work is done and have been successful. If you look at especially the big acquisition that we did last year, Cybercom.
We are proud to be a company that contribute to transition to carbon neutral world around with our new sustainability goals. Looking ahead, we see a good sign of continued good demand on the market. We are very well positioned for continued profitable growth. We look forward for exciting opportunities ahead. That's all. Now we are open for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue for the question-and-answer session. We already have one question in the list, and the first one comes from Daniel Djurberg, Handelsbanken Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
I'm not sure if I lost myself. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. It's Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Hi, and congratulations to really strong numbers here. A tough day in the market, though. I was wondering first, you mentioned about continued tough trends in terms of recruiting and turnover trends and so forth. I guess, especially so, should be naturally in Cybercom or Connectivity. Can you comment if you've seen some kind of abnormal hikes there and if you were heading into more normal waters or with regards to Connectivity. Thank you.
No, there is not a higher employee turnover in our business area Connectivity than the other business areas.
Oh, that's good to hear. Also, obviously super strong demand still in most segments and geographies it seems. The question is really do you see any signs of weak demand? Because we have some companies talking about insourcing, and we do see component shortage hitting and building, you know, in inventories and all the industrials and so forth. My question is, if you can see around the corner a bit in terms of automotive and so on, if you're planning for this high demand to continue for the full year?
We don't see any sign of weak demand at all. We plan for a good demand this year. I think that will continue for quite a while, even if, of course, those industry companies that you're talking about are struggling with shortage of components, et cetera, that will probably not affect the investment in digitalization that much. I think that we will see a trend with an increased focus towards digital platforms and digitalization in those areas as well.
Perfect. The question on high employee turnover obviously also triggers, and we also have a very inflationary environment. The question is, do you think you will be able to pass on salary increases to pricing or hiking prices in 2022? Is frame agreements a big problem on that, or can you go around them close a tad?
I think that we will see a salary increase in our market, 2022. We have already seen that coming, as those discussions mainly are in springtime. I'm pretty convinced that we will be able to take that out in higher prices. Of course, we have a situation where we have long-term contracts, for example, frame agreements. There is always a percentage of those that are renewed every year. I think that will even out in 2022.
Thank you. My last question would be to Marie. It would be a little bit if you can remind us about the number of workable hours that impacted Q1, i.e., the year-over-year effect. I guess we had a little bit positive Easter effect in this quarter compared to this quarter. Also Q3, Q4, how it will be in the number of days. Thank you.
Actually, we had a positive effect of the hours, but that was more in January than later in the quarter. It's always difficult to estimate how much that is affecting us when it's more hours around the New Year's and the holidays during Christmas. But apart from January, it was more or less the same. I wanted to keep in mind also that we have now also businesses in several countries. It's not only to look at the figures in Sweden. However, we don't give any details about our hours. But you can look at how it's the main holidays, and you can get a pretty good estimate of what it's gonna turn out this year.
It is true that it was a positive effect this quarter.
Okay. Thanks, fair enough. Good luck here in Q2. Again, congratulations.
Thanks.
Thank you. We have another question from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you very much. I start off with a question on different countries in the Nordics. You write that you see strong demand in different countries in the different segments, like Norway in Solutions, while Sweden and Denmark in particular in Experience. What is explaining that really? Is it different type of projects being made in the different markets, and why is that?
I think that's more of an internal discussion, how long we have developed our internal business in those countries and the possibilities that we are facing.
Okay. Much more than the general market trend there?
Yeah. I think it's the general market is strong in all countries, in all areas. I think that it wouldn't be wise for us to rank the different business area markets in the different countries in detail.
Okay. Fair enough. Looking at Sweden then, the EBITDA margin in Q1 here was close to 16%. That must be close to all-time high historically, I guess. What is driving that mainly? Is it prices, or is it utilization? And do you expect that level to remain during 2022 as salary inflation will probably come a bit later this year?
I think that it's really strong margins in Sweden this quarter. I think one thing is that we have been able at year-end to increase prices and we see an increase also in salaries now coming. I think that we will be able to continue to increase prices during the year though. We will see what happens. I can say that I think that will probably even out during the year.
Okay. Nothing unusual in this quarter that drove the strong margin. It was basically a good underlying execution.
Yeah. I think that of course we have a high utilization. I think that although we have a higher employee turnover than last year with the COVID situation, I think that we are still in a healthy situation if you compare to peers in our business. Of course as we are growing, we're also able to take on larger assignments with that are a little bit more complex. We see that happens already in Q1. We also see an effect of the integration and the synergies that we have been working to take out. There is a lot of small details connected to the margin.
Of course, you have to bear in mind that Q1 is almost always a very strong margin quarter.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. It's a number of things that all went in the right direction this quarter that sums up to this good EBITDA margin.
Okay. That's very clear. And then of the roughly 10% pro forma organic growth here in Q1, how much was explained by increased utilization versus prices and underlying growth in employees to get the feeling of the main driver here?
We don't disclose that in detail, but of course prices is one component. We also see that we grow with higher utilization. We in some areas with a shortage of people, we grow with subcontractors as well. It's a lot of different things.
Yeah, I guess it's the same answer there. It's a lot of small things adding up, both prices, utilization. We have the calendar effect that was mentioned earlier.
Yeah, as you see in the report, it's more that than that we are increasing that much with the amount of employees.
True. Okay. Another question on Insight then. I mean, you have been above 15% margin historically, but you are not really there now despite the strong market. What is needed to happen in Insight to return back to the 16%-17% we have seen historically?
I think if you go down to details in Insight, we have had the consolidation of, actually, I think it's five subsidiaries in Stockholm to one, starting end of Q4, continuing now in Q1 that have affected the margin. We also see that we had to stop one or two projects in Finland during the quarter. It's actually more in the details.
Okay. Interesting. My last question is on the net recruitment of 22 people here in Q1. Was that in line with your expectations, or are you working to achieve something higher than that in the rest of the year?
It wasn't a net recruitment of 22 people. You have to bear in mind that we had an acquisition of around 40 people as well. Q1 is always a quarter where we are not growing organically with people. That was the case last year and the year before that, et cetera. What I'm happy about is that it's a little bit less people down this quarter than the quarter before, even if we are bigger. The percentage and the trend is really good.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
We have another question from [inaudi ble] from Vator Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Another question on the personnel turnover. I'm wondering about those consultants that are leaving Knowit. Are you able to, or what's kind of your strategy to replace them? Are you able to replace them with people of the same seniority and expertise, or are you more replacing them with junior consultants, meaning that you perhaps lose some competence there?
Yeah, it's both. We actually try to focus on recruiting younger people as we all get one year older. The experience and the competence will be there anyway. The problem for us is not to recruit senior competencies, because that we have a shortage of that. It's more the opposite actually. That's the main focus. I think that we are, as you see in the figures as well, really good in getting a lot of new people on board.
Yeah. Thanks. Then I'm wondering if you could share anything on the M&A pipeline currently, and if you will make additional acquisitions this year, or those likely to be of smaller size like the Danish ones you did, or yeah, could you comment anything on that?
Well, they will probably be smaller than Cybercom and not too small. I can't comment that in detail. Of course we have a pipeline, but what we are thoroughly going through every detail around culture, financials, possibility to good integration, et cetera. I'm pretty happy with the pipeline and. As. It's actually the same answer that I've always given. We won't promise anything because the most important for us is to do the right ones and we will see what comes.
All right. Sounds good. That was all for me. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have another question from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken again. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. I more or less had the same type of questions. But perhaps I can ask you like this. I'm looking at the churn again. Is it an equal mix among those leaving the company? Is it both more younger employees and mid experienced and also with high seniority? So or is it tilted towards mid or higher? That's my first question.
No, it's a pretty equal mix actually. I think the shortage in Sweden right now of highly skilled people in our business is around 70,000 people. It's a big problem for example, Sweden. The more senior people are going to really interesting management opportunities at our customers. We see that it's actually quite evened out due to age.
Okay, that's good. May I ask, can you tell us a little bit more about your cybersecurity business? If you can. I know it's very hard to find talented employees there, but it's super hot segment and I guess it should be easy to raise prices and so forth. Can you just give us a picture of how it looks like now and size and trends and strategies would be great.
It's continuing to grow organically. We are present now in Sweden and in Norway. We have actually trainee programs and cybersecurity programs for people that haven't been in that part of the business before, so that we help them get into that part of the business. We are trying with a lot of ways to continue to grow organically, and that part is growing organically actually as well.
Thank you. Any ballpark numbers in terms of employees or revenues like, you know, 50, 100, 200, or it was.
It's around 150 people. Yeah, it's around 150 people.
Is it mainly time and material or do you also have some kind of, you know, managed services security or yeah?
We have some. If you add on, it's actually around 180-190 people. If you add on, we have some managed services there as well and. Of course, most of it is time and materials. That area is part of those 150 people is part of our Insight area, so they are really high-end connected to security consultancy. A lot of strategy work, connections to the customer's business models and how to integrate the security work in the customer's strategy.
Perfect. Thank you so much. That was all for me.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero-one on your telephone keypad.
We do have a question email.
No further questions.
We have some questions through email or from our website. Maybe you can take those.
Yeah, it's actually one question, and you have touched on this study before. Do you foresee wage increases causing margin pressure going forward?
We foresee wage increases, but we foresee price increases in line. All right. Well, if there is no more questions, we would like to thank you all for listening and hope to see you in the mid of this summer again. Thank you.
Thank you.